Microsoft is trying to reignite excitement around its mobile business with a string of announcements today at Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, Spain. Microsoft is set to announce a new version of its mobile operating system, Windows Mobile 6.5. The company also officially confirmed already public developments including a new version of Internet Explorer 6; My Phone -- a backup and recovery service for contacts, photos and other data stored on a mobile device; and a forthcoming Microsoft mobile application store.Windows Mobile 6.5 features a new user interface and "honeycomb" start screen with hexagonal tiles for each program that are designed to be easier to use on touch-screen phones.The start menu can be customized with rich Internet applications, such as weather or stock reports, that are automatically updated. "Like if you go to the iPhone, you can go to the weather application, but you have to go into to actually make it update," said Scott Rockfeld, a director in Microsoft's Windows Mobile group.The whole user interface is designed to be more "finger friendly," in recognition of the touch controls of many mobile phones running Windows Mobile, Rockfeld said. A new home screen looks "very similar to a Zune, which may be where from the rumors came from about the Zune phone, but ultimately we found from the Zune experience that this actually works for people," he said. More at; http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2009/02/16/windows_mobile_65_features.html
